1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to web page editing systems, and more particularly to a web page editing system that can generate web page links for linking to a database to perform data queries and filtering to achieve a data drill-down effect.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In today's information age, databases are used to store and transfer large, complex sets of data. The data is typically stored in a database on a computer system. Currently, many database systems using Structured Query Language (SQL) can be found on the market, and many types of software are available for performing queries against the database systems, such that users who are unfamiliar with SQL commands can still access data in the database systems. Beyond using specific database software, web pages can also link to databases to provide data query functions. Thus, the user can use a typical web browser to connect to, and search, the database, which eliminates the need to install and use specific database software.
In the prior art, a web page editing system for creating web pages that link to databases comprises a web page editing module. A web page designer can utilize a web page editing interface to open a connection with a database module, send authorization information to the database module, and after being authorized, link to a plurality of databases in the database module to read and display data of the databases. The web page designer can select any type of data, and use the editing system to display the data on a web page in table, graph, or other display format according to various settings.
When querying the database, the user often needs a dimension of the queried data to perform a top-down analysis. For example, after obtaining a corporation's revenue reports for all countries, the user may want to look at transactions data (or other data) for one country. This kind of query behavior is called “drill-down.” When creating a linked database web page, generating drill-down functions is particularly complicated. First, rules and statements for variables related to transmission of data in the database must be defined. Then, links must be attached dynamically to data during web page data queries. Finally, the web page must be designed to update data after processing dynamically received links. These tasks require a programmer who is familiar with programming languages, SQL, and databases to write program code and the web page. However, most programming or editing environments lack corresponding functions, e.g. rules for defining transmitting and receiving links, that allow establishment, transmission, and reception of links to follow a defined standard, and also lack embedding of program code in the web page that allows a server for the web page to perform a variety of tasks as the server receives arguments from the web page. Simultaneously, when the editor lacks dynamic SQL syntax functions, links cannot be dynamically attached when querying data, and variable links cannot be processed. For example, the database may have a list of countries and various kinds of data corresponding to each country. If the user wants to use a linked database of a first web page to query names of all countries, and after selecting one of the names of the countries, use a second web page to query various other information related to the country, but is unable to use a variable to represent a dynamically changing country name, the first web page will be unable to assign a link immediately to every country name obtained through the query, and the second web page will also be unable to receive dynamically generated country name arguments to query the various other information.
Due to the fact that web page designers must input comprehensive and large amounts of program code and SQL syntax to increase functionality, results depend heavily on the web page designer's programming and SQL ability, and are limited by the editing tools used. Thus, developing web sites with advanced query functions is a very difficult task, causing many linked database web pages to lack drill-down query functions.